Thursday, August 26, 2010

ON USING THE WORD "SUBSTITUTE" AS A VERB IN A COOKING CONTEXT

I'm posting this because I've noticed, over the last few years, that many people are confused about how to use the word substitute as a verb, and it causes much confusion when people are discussing substitutions in a cooking context. For instance (as you will see from the expert opinions below), if you want to replace butter with margarine, you can say one of the following:

"substitute margarine for the butter" (preferred)

OR

"substitute butter with margarine" (seems to be frowned upon by grammar experts)

Better yet (and I have to remember this myself!), for clarity, simply say

"replace the butter with margarine"!

Unfortunately, I often see phrases like this:

"I substituted the cocoa powder for chocolate milk mix"

(this is a real example)

In fact, the personactually meant (and I could tell this by reading the original recipe): "I replaced the cocoa powder with chocolate milk mix"OR

"I substituted chocolate milk mix for the cocoa powder"

This interests me because I want my recipes to be clear and understandable, and I'm trying to improve my own language in the recipes I write.

Some expert opinions:

1.)

To substitute means to put a person or thing in the place of another; it does not mean to take the place of another.

When A is removed and B is put in its place, B is substituted for A and A is replaced by B.

Substitute is wrongly used in:

"The Minister said he hoped to substitute coarse grain with homegrown barley"

The Minister ought either to have used the verb replace, or, if he insisted on the verb substitute, to have said

A couple of other recipe complaints (I don't believe you ever do these): #1 Some herb or other, "to taste", with no indication of how much to start with. #2 A "bunch" of herbs, or a "handful", with no indication of size or weight of said bunch. No doubt we will adjust them "to taste" without being prompted, but where to start? OK I'm done.

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